Italy Becomes Europe’s Second Largest Online Gambling Market

Italy’s online gambling market has become the second largest in Europe thanks to a 25% increase in operator revenue in 2016.

Figures that were published by the Milan Polytechnic University show that Italy’s regulated online gambling market revenue reached a total of €1.026 billion last year, a full 25% more than in 2015. The university has said that this makes the Italian market second only to the UK in terms of revenue with France in third and Spain in fourth.

It was casinos that took the majority of the online revenue at €439 million, up 33% year on year. Sports betting was a close second at €350 million, up 31% and poker ranked third at €13 million, down 10%. The remaining online products such as bingo, lotteries, virtual betting, exchange betting and horseracing accounted for the remaining €97 million.

The statistics also show that the average Italian online gambler is a male between the ages of 25 and 34. However, the number of women gambling online rose to 17% last year. The average gambler has 2.14 online accounts and the average spending per active player rose 7% to €111. There were 1.79 million Italians that made at least one online bet last year, up 15% from 2015.

Mobile gambling accounted for around 23% of last year’s total, up from 19.2% the year before. Sports betting was the most popular form of mobile gambling with 56% of betting done on a mobile device compared to 29% for casino.

It is expected that the Italian gambling market will grow even more when the government makes a further 120 new online gambling licenses available in the coming weeks and months.